“GLAMOROUS NIGHT: The Musicals of Ivor Novello” Gala ConcertOn Sunday 10 September Wales Millennium Centre takes to London’s West End with a red carpet evening to celebrate legendary Welsh songwriter, playwright, actor and matinee idol Ivor Novello, in a gala concert taking place in the very theatre now bearing his name. “GLAMOROUS NIGHT: The Musicals of Ivor Novello”, which will be performed at London’s newly renamed Novello Theatre, has already received critical acclaim following its world premiere in Cardiff and subsequent U.S. premiere. The concert now brings Novello’s musicals back home to the West End for the first time in decades. The “one night only gala” stars sopranos Marilyn Hill Smith and Shan Cothi, tenor Rhys Meirion, West End stars Rosemary Ashe and Richard Reynard, compere Frank Lincoln, and violin soloist Gillian Findlay. All will be accompanied by Sinfonia Britannia, conducted by its Emmy Award winning music director George Daugherty. This unforgettable evening will showcase music from Novello’s most popular musicals, including Glamorous Night, The Dancing Years, King’s Rhapsody, Gay’s The Word, Careless Rapture, Perchance To Dream, Arc de Triomphe, and Theodore and Company. And within these musicals are Novello’s most beautiful songs, including Waltz Of My Heart, On Such A Night As This, I Can Give You The Starlight, When The Gypsy Played, Shine Through My Dreams, Some Day My Heart Will Awake, We’ll Gather Lilacs and of course, Glamorous Night. Produced and created by Daugherty and his Emmy Award-winning producing partner David Lik Wong, this production has painstakingly researched, recovered, and revived the original West End orchestrations which were actually used in Novello’s record-setting London runs, and have used these original arrangements as the foundation for the concert. Coupling these original scores with Novello’s originally-sized orchestra of 36, and all in an “acoustic” sound design harkening back to the West End of the 1930’s and 40’s, audiences will get a rare look and listen into the “Golden Age” of the London West End musical theatre. The concert takes place in the newly-renamed Novello Theatre, formerly The Strand, which has recently undergone a major refurbishment by Delfont Mackintosh Theatres Ltd. It is an especially historically-fitting location for this concert, as Ivor Novello himself lived in a flat above this theatre for 38 years, from 1913 to 1951. He was stricken and died in the flat on 6 March, 1951, just hours after performing the lead in his own musical King’s Rhapsody. 7,000 mourners attended his funeral a few days later. Wales Millennium Centre’s Chief Executive Judith Isherwood explains: “One of our ambitions is to take the very best of Wales to the world by producing and presenting our own shows. This show has already played to audiences not only in Wales, but also earlier this year in San Francisco. Now, audiences in London will have the opportunity to see this production at the very appropriate venue of the Novello Theatre. “The fact that we have exported Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night concert across the Atlantic, and now to the West End, demonstrates that we have the ability to produce and present high quality entertainment.” The Glamorous Night concert will mark the launch of Cymry for the World 2006 – awards honouring Welsh entertainment legends to celebrate their outstanding contributions to music, theatre and film. Recipients of the awards will be revealed at an exclusive high tea event for Super Seat* ticket holders at the Waldorf Hilton to coincide with the gala evening with the awards themselves taking place at WMC in November 2006, the Centre’s second anniversary. Recipients of the first Cymry for the World, which took place at the opening gala for WMC in November 2004, included Welsh icons Dame Shirley Bassey, Sian Phillips and Richard Burton. The Glamorous Night gala evening will start at 6.30pm and tickets start from £25. *Super Seat tickets cost £95 and include pre-concert reception including champagne at the Waldorf Hilton where the Cymry for the World winners will exclusively be announced and best seats in the auditorium. For further information and for details of special packages, visit the website at www.wmc.org.uk or call the WMC ticket office on 08700 402 000. EOS is the official airline of "Glamorous Night" and Sinfonia Britannia. |
| Wales Millennium Centre web site: www.wmc.org.uk |
| Esther Eckley e-mail: esther.eckley@wmc.org.uk |
Thursday, June 29, 2006 |
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